Attention, please! We have moved to a new office!

This is a follow-up article to my previous one, “Here we grow again”, in which I wrote about X-Formation’s growth over the past years, and the need to buy a bigger office that would allow us to grow even further and better meet the demands of our 500+ Customers. And today you can get a first-hand scoop on the latest developments at X-Formation as we’re delighted to inform you that we have just moved into our own sparkly new office, where everything is different and better: from giant, geeky pixel wall art to our own car and bike parking space. While preparing the interior, we had two magical words in our mind: utility and design. We still have some things to get done and we want to spice the office up a bit, but we’re getting settled :-).

Moving to new premises is a big jump in space and luxury, because the new office is almost the double the size of the one where we used to work, has more natural light, different color theme on each floor that matches each floor’s pixel wall art inspired by Mario, Lemmings and Pacman, and new colorful kitchen furniture!

Recently we have also recognized the importance of adding flowers to workspace (it’s not just that they look pretty, but they can be a great way to boost productivity—more on this topic soon), so we have enhanced the interior with some energizing flowers and plants.

We believe our new office will create a more productive environment, and will let us increase our workload and accommodate more employees so that we can serve our Customers better and faster, and bring more value to their businesses. We’re sure our office will have a huge impact on the future of X-Formation.

We have a number of meeting rooms now, each of which is uniquely decorated and gives a distinct and inimitable experience. There are also three modernly furnished and very useful kitchens with colors matching game themes, a cosy canteen with a TV set and countless channels to choose from, a great games room with foosball, and, most importantly, spacious rooms for developers and other teams greatly facilitating communication between all of us.

In conclusion moving from the old office to the new office is a big step ahead. Keep an eye for more updates on how we’re getting settled in our new work environment.

Due to moving to sparkly new office space, our telephones will be offline on 20 February 2015 until the end of the day. Also, please note that answers to your emails may be delayed on this day.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Kind regards,

X-Formation Team

License Statistics v4.18 is here!

We’re pleased to announce another release of License Statistics, the industry-leading license monitoring solution. We’ve launched this release as part of our continued commitment to software excellence for all our Customers.

In this major upgrade we’re introducing an opt-in system that lets License Statistics users decide if they want to haveanonymous information on how they are using License Statisticscollected. The purpose is to analyze visitor traffic and paint a complete picture of License Statistics users to gain better insight into how they are using the product, and what we can do to further improve the user experience. For example, we may see:

most commonly used License Statistics versions

the number of sessions in which a page was viewed

average session duration

other anonymous metrics

Based on what our Customers tell us they want and need, we have also enhanced settings for selecting LDAP user groups they want to import, making it possible to easily import any of LDAP user groups. This improvement will enable our Customers to quickly exclude even dozens of groups from being imported in situations when they only need to import a few of them.

Furthermore, we have also enhanced License Statistics’ monitoring mechanism, thereby improving the product’s robustness, as well as ensuring even better correctness of the delivered data. The new, enhanced monitoring, which aims to maximally parallelize querying, may impose extra resource requirements for the installations of License Statistics using really slow and resource-hungry query tools.

When upgrading to this release, you must upgrade from v4.10 or later. Because of the high volume of changes introduced in this release, ensure you back up your database before upgrading License Statistics to this version.

We’re happy that we have fulfilled so many customer requests and look forward to hearing your reactions to this newest release of License Statistics.

10 Good Reasons to Choose LM-X License Manager

Making your customers happy is a big part of what makes you successful. With LM-X License Manager you can not only satisfy your users by providing them with diverse licensing models, but also give the users a hassle-free access to your software, all at a reasonable price.

We know at least 10 good reasons why LM-X License Manager is a better license management alternative to other solutions that exist today for both small and large companies. The following reasons should get a mention:

1. Simple to use.

LM-X License Manager follows a simple philosophy: The majority of end users don’t care much about licensing; they just want something that works and is easy to set up. LM-X supports these goals by helping vendors solve their licensing needs while helping end users to get their applications up and running as effortlessly as possible. Various features, such as easy-to-use setup tools, automatic license server discovery, and redundant license servers support these objectives.

2. Get the features you want, without extra baggage.

LM-X License Manager is slim: It doesn’t expose the complexity of legacy license management systems that have become so expansive and complex that even experts have problems supporting them and solving problems. LM-X also doesn’t burden you with hundreds of pages of documentation you must pore over to learn and reference how to use the features you’re interested in. Instead, LM-X gives you the essentials without laboring you with a ton of useless features that users rarely, if ever, need.

3. Get superior security for your intellectual property.

LM-X License Manager is more secure than our competitors solutions. We don’t include “back doors” that can override functionality or enable crackers to obtain information.

4. Feel confident that we can handle your needs.

LM-X License Manager is robust and proven in production (see our customer testimonials). LM-X protected software is deployed with Fortune 500 companies and other large billion dollar corporations in the fields of computer graphics and movie production, automotive, aircraft, aerospace, military, bio-informatics, education, and several other industries.

5. Get unbeatable support.

We deliver support within 24 hours and want your feedback for improving LM-X License Manager. Using our issue tracking system, you can be part of the development team — entering and tracking issues, submitting enhancement requests, keeping up with the latest development activity, and more.

7. Get all you need for less.

8. Different licensing models.

LM-X offers a large number of license models that let you satisfy every type of customer, including network/floating licenses, single-user/node-locked licenses, time-limited licenses restricting usage periods and allowing subscription-based licensing models, trial licenses, pay per use licenses, and many more.

9. Get up and running quickly.

You can get started with LM-X immediately. LM-X comes with helpful samples and clear, uncomplicated documentation, and it doesn’t require complex training or other ramp-up time.

Ready to try LM-X License Manager? Get your evaluation copy today!

Case Study: REEL opts for License Statistics to optimize the use of its network licenses

Company overview

REEL’s core business involves developing, manufacturing, installing and maintaining complex handling and lifting equipment systems. REEL also provides specialized services that center around three main activities: maintenance, modifications and improvements, as well as the supply of spare and exchange parts.

With almost 70 years of tradition in the industry, presence on four continents and impressive portfolio of services, REEL has managed to successfully build its position in several key industrial sectors, such as nuclear energy, aluminium production, aeronautics, defense, and offshore.

Challenge

REEL has established its presence as a provider of handling and lifting equipment systems all around the world and it continues exploring and targeting new customers. Yet entering new markets (and developing existing ones) entails deploying additional CAD software licenses across the company, especially when it is accompanied by high turnover of temporary employees. As a veteran in the industry, REEL remains intimately familiar with the importance of tracking license usage across the organization.

The choice: License Statistics

One of the big reasons REEL decided to start using License Statistics is the software’s unmatched ability to track and report software license usage gathered from a number of supported license servers, let alone the software’s ease of use and support REEL received from X-Formation. License Statistics turned out to be a solution that helped REEL effectively manage and maximize license investment, improve productivity and make informed license management decisions.

Summary

Using License Statistics allows for cost reduction through software license optimization. After switching to X-Formation’s solution, REEL is able to more accurately forecast its future licensing needs and cut its operational costs.

Interested in License Statistics? Remember that we’re only a click awayif you’d like to discuss this unique license monitoring solution with us more.

New Year’s Day (Thursday, 1 January)

Epiphany (Tuesday, 6 January)

Also, please note that on Wednesday, 24 December, our office will be open only until 3 pm.

Merry Christmas!

X-Formation Team

License Statistics v4.17 just released!

WE’re delighted to announce the release of License Statistics version 4.17. This major upgrade brings some appealing new features, performance enhancements, and addresses a few bug fixes found in previous versions. Overall, this adds up to a much more stable and sophisticated product that makes it easier for you to manage and interpret your license usage data.

THIS release has seen considerable improvements to the Current Users report, which now includes two visually rich charts that give you a clear picture of the percentage of users who are currently using at least one license, the percentage of users who are not using any license at all, and information about the users that are using the highest number of licenses.

In this release we also introduced a new Usage History report, which replaced the Usage Per Feature report used for monitoring license usage information for each feature or a selected feature for the current license server. The new, revamped report has been enhanced with some advanced filtering and grouping options.

Here’s a quick recap on what else was done in this release:

we added the Merge and Aliases tabs to the Edit License Server dialog in the Realtime License Server grid

we added the ability to hide the display of the Feature Usage History graph, thereby increasing the performance of License Statistics

This release has also seen a number of bug fixes, so be sure to read Release Notes to get all the details.

Our ability to roll out frequent, stable releases that solve real issues for our user community is attributable to our customer-driven development methodology. We add new features or rework old ones, based on what you tell us you want and need. Each release we put out is thoroughly tested and evaluated to make sure our software will work the way it should.

This interactive process is ongoing, so please continue sharing your comments to help us make License Statistics even better for you in the future.

Update: new version of LM-X License Manager out today!

RECENTLY we’ve been working without respite to address some issues as well as bring more enhancements to LM-X, our software license manager. And today we’re glad to announce that we’ve launched LM-X version 4.7.3 as part of our continued commitment to software excellence for our Customers.

Here is a quick recap on what we did in this release:

As of this release, expired licenses are no longer loaded on license servers. We made this improvement, because using expired licenses with duplicate licenses resulted in their inconsistent behavior. Furthermore, in this release we have:

Added versioning for all dll files to enable distinguishing between different components

Improved logging procedure by preventing chcon errors from being displayed in non-SELinux environment

Interested in evaluating the latest version of LM-X License Manager? Submit your request for evaluation today.

As with all of our product improvements, the improvements and fixes in this release were made in direct response to customer feedback. We do our best to listen to you and incorporate as many of your suggestions and requests as possible. This interactive process is ongoing, so please continue sharing your comments to help us make LM-X License Manager even better for you in the future.

Here we grow again!

EARLIER this year we celebrated X-Formation’s 10th anniversary in business and its successful transition from a youthful start-up to a company with an established track record of more than500 Customers,to whom we are genuinely grateful for their contribution and collaboration with us over these amazing 10 years.

We take pride in our “can do” approach and our ability to provide reliable software licensing solutions and solid, unflagging support, because we know that being able to deliver on promises and meet customers’ needs translates into our ability to retain so many of them. Our customer retention rate is a stunning 96%+, and the goal is to keep it that way.

As our customer base grows, so does our staff.

We continue to add talented individuals to our team—this year we have expanded our engineering staff and support crew. As our team grows, so does our overall skill level, and we become stronger and therefore able to provide even more sophisticated software licensing solutions and superior level of supportto our customers.

Our multinational team, which is made up of almost 25 people, is comprised of passionate individuals with diverse backgrounds, each of whom is committed to embrace a collaborative approach to working and serving our customers.

IN THE WAKE OF our growth and expansion over the past years, as well as our increased team size, we realized that we needed to have more space for our employees. This is why we bought new real property which is almost double the size of the one where we work now. The new seat will get the super modern setup and will undoubtedly be one of the best-designed, inspiring offices in Europe’s Silicon Valley, Cracow.

With this great change, which is one of the biggest ones on record, we are planning to further increase our performance and enhance our three end-to-end software licensing solutions: License Statistics, LM-X License Managerand License Activation Center(LAC) so that our customers can continue increasing their productivity and boost business operations.

Some even more ambitious plans are in the offing, and we will keep you up-to-date on the latest news and events at X-Formation. Suffice it to say that we stay focused on keeping an eye for ways to reach new markets and grow further.

Follow us on our website and Facebook to get the latest updates and know what changes are on the cards.

Thank you for you support! But for you, we wouldn’t be here now. The credit for all our remarkable success goes to the trust we’ve been able to gain thanks to our valued Customers.

On this occasion, we would also like to wish all our Customers Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and a lot of success and prosperity in the coming year.

Public holiday notice

Dear Customers,

Please be advised that our office in Krakow, Poland, will be closed on Tuesday, November 11th due to a public holiday. Our sales staff will be unavailable on this day, so answers to your questions may be delayed.

We’re sorry for any inconvenience this may cause, and greatly appreciate your patience.